Pachisi!
I've been thinking about some minigames related to our @holozing project as I'm impatiently waiting around for the pieces of the puzzle to stick together and I remembered an old game I used to play with my parents. Wasn't quite sure what it was called, then found out that Ludo was trademarked so was kind of bummed out about it at first but then realized that it's actually inspired from an ancient indian game called pachisi!
Did some more research, talked to Claude about how we should build it, it recommended babylon.js since I wanted it to have 3d elements while at the same time working on a browser with low resource costs.
Naturally it needed its zing so had to plan out the game ahead of time. First iterations weren't great:
but the idea evolved over time.
Instead of just having models that move on the board on the roll of a dice, I wanted it to have more action on the board.
I imported some important game logic from @holozing, i.e. creature rarity stats, creature stats, etc, it got so complicated at one point that I had to strip a lot of things away.
As the game rules stand right now, for let's say version 1.0, are as follows:
1 healer per player with mana, we currently have 2 healer models: Male Ocean and Female Forest. 3 creatures per player, 3 of the 4 starters: grass - Wrackoo, fire - Infurno and water - Walle.
Who starts is randomized, you need to roll a 6 to get a creature out on the field, rolling another 6 allows you to place another creature on the field (there can be more than 1 creatures on the same field currently)
Melee only for starters, creatures can be attack from a creature coming in from the back and being one tile behind as well as when they pass they attack enemy creatures on the way.
Creatures have their own HP.
To heal the creatures you have to be 9 tiles within your base.
Creatures have to go around the board twice to be able to enter the "home" tiles.
You need to place all 3 creatures in their home tiles to win the game.
Here's a screenshot of what the game looks like currently, keep in mind however we have yet to include the healer models.
They board is designed in a way where we can include ranged creatures later as well as give existing ones more moves, meaning when creatures are near the intersection they can perform ranged attacks on many nearby tiles, doesn't matter if they're on the same "path" or not. Currently melee attacks can still be performed at the intersection if creatures are close enough.
The green and blue circle lets players know on which tiles creatures can be healed.
A heal and its strength is also decided by the roll of the dice and each heal costs the same amount of mana, so you have to use them wisely!
Giant Wrackoo is ready to fight!
Anyway, still some things to polish, game needs to be added to the website, ways to enter games and invite other players needs to be created. Storing game results, awarding players some zing for playing - etc.
Early requirements will be that you've bought at least one vial to play. Eventually you may need to have all 3 starters to play (or other creatures) and a healer.
Some more things to mention I may have forgotten above.
Some tiles have elemental domains, meaning when you're standing on them if a creature of that elemental type attacks you, you take additional damage. Other tiles are currently just empty but we can add some more stuff to spice things up. Testing and playing will be required to see if the game logic isn't greatly thought out yet or if there's some way players figure out how to always win, etc. If there's 2 or more creatures on the same tile, they all take damage from an incoming attack currently. We're leaving that as is for now and see how it develops. If a creature faints they go back to base and need to be placed back onto the board with a roll of 6. Obviously you can't heal enemy creatures nor damage friendly creatures.
Let me know your thoughts and if you're ready to have some rng fun as well as maybe some strategy behind your playstyle in this @holozing minigame!
We'll announce it on the main account when the game's ready to be played - along with many other updates we've neglected to get out for a while now (sorry about that)!